(Maricopa) Maricopa Unified School District #20 will be hosting a free Makerspace End of the School Year event for Pinal County educators on Saturday, June 9th from 9:00 a.m. - noon at the District office: 44150 W. Maricopa-Casa Grande Highway. In an effort to create greater visibility for the makerspace, STEM and STEAM education community, Dr. Donna Jagielski, technology integration specialist of MUSD #20, is spearheading the Pinal County STEM Educators Collective. Dr. Jagielski has been collaborating with various educational leaders in the area on how to achieve greater visibility for STEM based learning in a shared community. Besides the role she serves as technology integration specialist, Dr. Jagielski is an active member of the professional organization AzTEA (Arizona Technology in Education Association).

Dr. Jagielski received a stipend from MakerEd (#MakerPromise), a leader in the maker education movement, to host a makerspace meetup event. The Maricopa Unified School District started two makerspace communities this year, the first at Santa Rosa Elementary School and the second at Saddleback Elementary School. These makerspaces have introduced 5th grade students to engineering and coding concepts through various collaborative and hands-on experiences such as constructing a zipline, tower building, catapults, Code.org and Scratch.

The goal of this first meetup is to bring Pinal County STEM/STEAM educators together in one space where they can share out an educational activity they facilitated during the course of the school year. This initial sharing will produce the first stage of a collection in a digital repository of vetted activities for the group to draw upon during the upcoming school year. Breakfast and lunch will be served at the event. There will also be raffle of prize giveaways. Pre-registration is highly recommended. Register at: https://goo.gl/djbGmr

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